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Chimp tests

From
David Leavens, University of Sussex, Sarah Boysen, Megan Bulloch, Ellen Furlong and Kim Bard

In her article on the mental lives of animals, Emma Young wrote, “Chimps… just don’t get abstract physical concepts, like weight, gravity and the transfer of force” (2 July, p 41). She cited work by Daniel Povinelli, in which a group of orphaned, institutionalised chimpanzees often failed to select a tool with the correct properties to retrieve food.

Yet when this same task was given to chimpanzees kept in unusually enriched captive circumstances – either raised as part of a human family or in very close association with people – they performed very well (Animal Cognition, vol 11, p 83). …

, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, University of Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK, Quest University Canada, Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, Yale University, US, University of Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK